In its latest conversation on Boulder's new and evolving city-wide parking strategy, the City Council on Thursday gave a barrage of feedback to consultants and planners tasked with balancing the city's goal of discouraging travel by car where possible, while still providing an appropriate amount of parking.

Over a wide-ranging session on the topic, the council discussed the merits of a possible city-wide parking district, requested further data on driver tendencies and parking habits and lamented perceived shortcomings of public transit provided by the Regional Transportation District, among other things.

It was the fifth such session the council has held since the Access Management and Parking Strategy — commonly referred to as AMPS — was launched in Boulder roughly a year and a half ago, and there are said to be several more to come.

"We're probably making the transportation staff crazy," Mayor Matt Appelbaum said toward the end of the third hour of AMPS discussion Thursday.

A consultant study that partially informing the strategy's direction on land use requirements for commercial, residential and office site parking plans claims that in almost all parts of Boulder, the supply of spaces exceeds the actual demand. But the council agreed Thursday that there is outreach to be done to convince the public of both the validity and greater meaning of the study's results.

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That study suggests, for example, that the Whole Foods on Pearl Street, a source of profound parking headaches for many in Boulder, is actually nowhere near full most of the time. Maybe the disconnect between data and perception can be explained by the fact that many people don't know that underground parking exists at that site, some on the council suggested.

Councilman Macon Cowles said that it is not only important to relay the numbers to citizens, but also to convince them of its accuracy.

"I'd like to see (the data) collected over a longer period of time," Cowles said, "so that people can see this is not just a shortcut that engineers would take."

The council also expressed a collective desire to better understand people using its parking facilities — not just to have them better understand the city's conclusions.

"All full-time employees in the downtown district have access to an (RTD) EcoPass, subsidized by funds collected in meters," Councilwoman Suzanne Jones said. "If these people have EcoPasses and they could use them but aren't, that would be the interesting thing to me. ... How do we figure that out?"

"I think there's so many people that would take the bus if they could," said Councilman George Karakehian, "because parking downtown is a pain."

Some drivers take cars because they need them to access certain places before or after work, councilwoman Lisa Morzel added. She suggested that more daycare options downtown might help incentivize EcoPass use.

Also up for discussion Thursday was the question of whether Boulder should form a city-wide parking district, or handle parking rules in each area (such as Boulder Junction and University Hill, for example) on an individual basis. Appelbaum said the latter approach could cause a spillover effect.

"No question, we need to kind of keep ratcheting down the parking, but we need to be smart about this," he said. "We keep saying that eventually all of Boulder is going to be a parking district, and I think it may come to that."

Morzel followed with a request for information she said would help guide decisions on districting.

"One of the things we're going to need are transportation hubs for satellite parking," she said. "We don't have all the infrastructure elements that we need. I would like (city staff) to come back with satellite parking and an understanding of where that would be, how that would work."

"This makes no sense to me," Karakehian added. "That we would try to have a one-size-fits-all (district) for our city. I don't know what that accomplishes. ...My head is spinning to think that we would take the chance on a new development, under-parking them, with the hope that some people wouldn't use their cars.

"I would rather overpark the site than have spillover into neighborhoods."

It was the council's final meeting together before three newly elected members — Bob Yates, Aaron Brockett and Jan Burton — are sworn in, replacing Tim Plass, Karakehian and Cowles.

Given the upcoming changeover, plus the fact that council members Andrew Shoemaker and Sam Weaver were absent Thursday, some felt uncomfortable holding the meeting at all.

"I feel very awkward doing a study session tonight when study sessions are supposed to set the stage for where we're going in the future," Morzel said.

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